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The show involved a teenage boy named Mark (Butch Patrick) who fell into the hat of Merlo the Magician (Charles Nelson Reilly) and arrived in Lidsville, a land of living hats. The hats on the show are depicted as having the same roles as the humans who would normally wear them. For example, a cowboy hat would act and speak like a cowboy. The characters' houses were also hat-shaped.

The vain,short-tempered, but somewhat naive HooDoo flew around on his Hatamaran, blasting the good citizens of Lidsville with bolts of magic (referred to as "zapping") and keeping them in fear, demanding that they pay him their Hat Checks. Mark helped the good hats resist as he attempted to find a way back home. HooDoo, trying to reclaim control of the androgynous Weenie from Mark, often enlisted the services of four Bad Hats consisting of Mr. Big, Captain Hooknose, Bella the Vampire's Cowl, and Boris the Executioner's Hood. In his high hat home, HooDoo was besieged by the taunting music of the Hat Band, as well as all of his talking knicknacks (The Parrot, Mr. Skull, the mounted alligator head, the sawed-in half lady, to list only a few). HooDoo also experienced further aggravation at the hands of his aides, the dim Raunchy Rabbit and his two-faced card guard, Jack of Clubs (a walking deck of playing cards). The show relied on an endless array of puns based on hats.

Like predecessors H.R. Pufnstuf and The Bugaloos, Lidsville ran for only one season (1971-1972) on ABC, with reruns airing for two more seasons (1972-1973 on ABC, 1973-1974 on NBC). 17 episodes of the series were produced.

In July 1999, one month after Rhino Home Video's release of The World of Sid & Marty Krofft, the company began releasing 2-episode VHS volumes of many of the Kroffts' shows. Volume 1 of Lidsville was released, but subsequent volumes didn't follow.

In 2004, The Complete Lidsville was issued on VHS by Rhino Home Video under their Rhino Handmade banner. This collection was a limited edition of 3,000 copies with a whopping retail price tag of $83.98.

Gold Key/Whitman published five issues of a LIDSVILLE comic book. The books were a mix of old stories as well as re-workings of some of the television episodes. Although the comics were faithful to the TV series, there were some major differences: Weenie the Genie was made less of a bumbler. In the comic, it was strictly stated that he could not work ANY magic unless Mark first rubbed the ring. Boris the Executioner's hood made NO appearances in the comics at all outside of cover photos, although the rest of the Bad Hats appeared regulary. HooDoo's flunky, Jack of Clubs, was only regulated to cameo appearances and never drawn the same way each issue.He was also depicted as a single card, rather than a deck. Mommy HooDoo, who appeared in the show as a plump, matronly woman, was depicted in the comics as an emaciated hag with steel wool hair. Lidsville's population was expanded on a bit, as new characters were introduced. Most notably a bird named Hooty Hatowl, a Town Crier hat, Toulouse the artistic painter's beret,The Cap people, An armoured Knight named Sir Rip Van Helmet, and the Red-Hooded Hatpeckers.

Characters from the series were featured in the live stage show The World of Sid & Marty Krofft Live at the Hollywood Bowl, which was filmed and aired as a television special. In the live show, however, Hoo Doo was portrayed by Paul Gale. When the special was broadcast on Nick at Nite in the late '90s, scenes with the Lidsville characters were omitted.

Lidsville characters were also featured in the Ice Capades during the early seventies.

Lidsville resembles a later British series, Hattytown Tales, produced by Hattyland Enterprises & FilmFair Ltd. in 1980, which used an almost identical concept but different characters and was produced in claymation.